nutrafin cycle

[White_Fin]

Hi! anyone use nutrafin cycle, every week? in the bottle says to add weekly to maintain biological balance. is it safe for shrimps?
And another question, how do you clean the bottom of your tank, without catching all shrimps?

[Mustafa]

I would not use any kind of "cycle" products that require weekly usage. They are useless. Once your tank has been cycled at the beginning of its life you do not need to keep adding anything to keep the "biological balance." All you need to to are regular water changes in addition to avoiding overstocking. Everything else promising you "improved biological balance" is just a marketing gimmick and, in my opinion, totally useless.

[White_Fin]

thanks for your advice Mustafa! tell me one thing, how do you clean the bottom of your tanks? i do parcial water chagens every week, but I can't catch the excrement without catching shrimplets? any sugestion

[Mustafa]

I don't clean the bottom. If you use sand, you won't have to clean the bottom. If you employ gravel, the layer should be so thin that it barely covers the bottom of the tank. That way all the "crap" won't accumlate in the gravel and form a deep layer of gunk. All that crap will be processed into finer particles by the shrimp and sucked up by the filter. Filter cleanings and water changes will take care of the rest. In other words, make sure that the shrimp excrements are accessible to the shrimp, as they will keep processing the feces into smaller and smaller particles until they float into the water column and get sucked up by the filter and/or are removed through water changes.

[White_Fin]

thanks mustafa!

[Shrimp&Snails]

Cycle is meant to cycle your tank quicker but the bottles sit on LFS's shelves for months if not years so how can they provide any help with cycling?

A sponge from an already cycled tank would be worth 50 times a bottle of cycle.